


Please Tell Me Why Do We Worry

by embarrassingresultofmyfreetime



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I mean he literally commits genocide which is like the #1 think the Doctor is against, The Doctor and the Master do the mindsharing thing, They do the forehead touch, This began as a character study on the Doctor working through her reaction to losing Gallifrey, Thoschei, and there isn't enough fics of 13 and the latest Master incarnation so ur welcome, and yes I know the Master is evil and a blatant murderer, but also? I don't care because I wanted to write this, but it turned into the Doctor trying to find the best even in the worst of situations, most of it turned into selfish hurt/comfort tho lol, with the Doctor realizing that the Master is even more upset about it all than she is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22182139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embarrassingresultofmyfreetime/pseuds/embarrassingresultofmyfreetime
Summary: (Spoilers for Skyfall part 2!!)After learning about the final loss of Gallifrey, the Doctor takes some time to grieve and finds herself with surprisingly mixed feelings about the whole ordeal.To her surprise, a knock at her Tardis door soon reveals the Master not only alive, but in uncontrollable mental agony as he reveals that the Doctor's suffering has been amplifying his own emotions via their telepathic bond.{Rated T only for possible anxiety triggers}
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thoschei - Relationship
Comments: 38
Kudos: 218





	Please Tell Me Why Do We Worry

**Author's Note:**

> I got carried away with this to be honest. The Doctor and the Master's dynamic is always high quality but I wanted to write them being a little softer with each other. They're both left with a lot of agony at the end of Skyfall p2 but we also know that they are often willing to put their differences aside and be civil when needed- so this is one of those times.
> 
> Edit:  
> (If this says it's been edited since it was posted it's just me trying to fix spelling/grammer lol)

[Post- Skyfall Part 2]

The Doctor knew her companions still wanted to know more than she was letting on. Their eyes begged for information that the Doctor didn't want to give them. The trio were too afraid to pry, but it was only a matter of time before their curiosity outweighed their trust in her.

Historically, the Doctor would only share the best of his home and live in the illusion that all was still well- but the Doctor now knew better than to carry on the lie.

She didn't want to put a barrier between herself and her friends by refusing to give honest answers; but to explain why her past was such a difficult topic would be a confession in itself of all the terrible things she'd done.

She was trying to move past all that, to become better and hopeful and human. She carefully considered every decision she made and checked with her friends before acting so that the darkest parts of her would stay locked away.

But all the illusions had caught up to her. The Master was back and at full force to play their old games; but the Doctor was absolutely blindsided by his scheme. She had believed the Master dead with no hope of revival and yet there he was.

His mere presence shattered her carefully built world. Because not only did he bring chaos, but his life was evidence of the Doctor's destructive past.

Now, her found family of humans knew that there was a dark part of her she was hiding from them and she felt torn.

Part of her longed to continue in her eternal dance with her old friend. The Master was chaos and suffering- but that meant the Doctor could make herself into the hero that Earth needed. The ability to battle without inelegantly killing the other felt like something sacred, a special bond they agreed upon so that their rivalry would never have to end.

And they both secretly liked it. Being thousands of years old, life got boring. They needed each other to stay grounded. But how could she explain something so destructive to her friends?

She was only now realizing how deeply rooted that part of her was and she didn't want to confess it. And what was more- she felt just as alone as she's ever been. Gallifrey getting destoryed in the war was one thing, but she had been healing from it. She was moving in. Why did it all have to rip her hearts apart all over again?

The Doctor dropped her friends off at home and claimed that the Tardis needed a pit stop somewhere with an uninhabitable atmosphere.

"We'll see you in a bit though, won't we Doc? Time travel and all that?" Graham said as the trio headed off in their own directions.

The Doctor nodded, "Yeah. Hopefully. As long as the calibration takes just fine."

Graham nodded and waved before turning away, as he usually did when the Doctor gave some scientific nonsense-sounding explanation he couldn't fully understand.

"See you!" Yaz said.

"Yeah, see you Doctor!" Ryan added over his shoulder.

"See you, fam!" The Doctor called after them with false cheerfulness before shutting the door.

She started the engines as quickly as possible.

She planned on returning for them but it still felt like a lie. She needed a little time alone to collect herself. She couldn't keep up the cheerful facade any longer. Her world was shattered and she was so alone.

She tucked herself away in the edge of the console room, on the top step where the hologram of the Master had appeared. She gently set down the disk and played it once more.

His voice kept her company, if only for a little while. His words hurt and the anger behind them hurt even more; but at least it meant she wouldn't have to hurt alone.

She felt like she had done this already. She should be able to move on by now- but these things only haunted her. She curled up close to herself and dipped her head, tears slowly slipping down her face and splashing onto her knees.

And then a message came in on her phone.

She didn't look at it, despite the unwelcomed noise it made. She wasn't in the mood to talk.

A few minutes later, another message.

And then another.

And another.

And another.

And they just kept going, the gap between each message and the next decreasing in rapid seccession.

Finally, she turned to the phone and picked it up in frustration, furiously brushing away the tears at her eyes.

'Stop calling me.' The message read, each subsequent one the same and sent dozens of times over by the time she replied.

'I'm not. This is a wrong number.' She quickly typed back.

'No, it's not. Now stop calling me before you embarrass yourself.'

The Doctor now moved to her feet and slowly paced through the Tardis with clear irritation. The deep blue lights of the Tardis gradually lightened to illuminate her path.

'I'm not calling you!' The Doctor typed back, aggravated.

"Not that way." A single message replied.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the Tardis door.

The Doctor closed her phone and jammed it into her pocket before racing over to look at the screen mounted to the Tardis console. She looked over it's readings with bewilderment because there should be no possible way for someone to _knock_ on the Tardis door. She was parked in deep space, hundreds of lightyears from any other forms of life- not only because she wanted to be alone, but because she had learned from the many past experiences of being crashed into. She had already made sure there would be no one capable of reaching her ship, let alone TOUCHING it.

What's more, the Tardis was set to blare alarms if any lifeform attempted to pass through the Tardis's outer shielding that wasn't a-

The rest of that sentence ended with the words 'Time Lord' but the Doctor didn't bother to finish it before swinging open the Tardis door.

Her feet stopped suddenly as she was met, face to face, with the Master. His arm was still raised in a tight fist and frozen still where his knuckles had connected with the wooden-style door.

He looked nearly as surprised as the Doctor felt as their eyes abruptly met, their faces mere inches appart and at perfect eyelevel.

In her shock, the Doctor suddenly stepped back and closed the door. A brief moment later, the realization of her reaction kicked in and she scolded herself. Her feet quickly circled the Tardis console and returned to the front door with more determination than before.

"Hello," she swung open the door with a smile. It was mostly false, for she didn't feel at all like smiling, but the sight of him seemed to spark it any how, "Come to gloat-"

"Stop. Calling. Me." The Master interrupted with more vexation than malace behind his words.

He paused a half-second to organize his thoughts. His fidgeting hands quickly jammed themselves into his pockets but the Master shifted his weight from one foot to the other in impatience. He didn't bother to acknowledge the Doctor's greeting before continuing on to whatever point he had already planned to make,

"It's incredibly distracting and I'm trying to work through some stuff of my own so if you could lay off-" he is anger increased with each word, swinging from each one to the next until 'lay off' was said with a clenched jaw.

"I don't know what you're talking about," the Doctor replied, leaning with her shoulder against the Tardis's doorframe casually crossing one leg over the other.

Meanwhile, the Master stood before her, his feet half-over the very edge of his porch. His ship- which STILL looked like a house- was pulled up next to hers so that it floated in perfect sync.

The Master- further upset by the nonchalance of the Doctor's reply- took a few steps back onto his own ship. He turned away from her to defuse a sudden burst of anguish. The Doctor watched as he let out a furious but low growl and then dramatically tossed his head back with closed eyes, breathing in an incredibly deep breath of air.

A moment later he returned to stand in the same spot as before with a better false appearence of being calm.

"In Paris," he explained with still barely-controled emotions behind his words, "you opened a psychic link between us. You did it again a few hours ago it's been bombarding me ever since. Now make it STOP!" He hissed the last word through his teeth. Seeing that his demand sparked no response from the Doctor, he abruptly switched gears to a different tactic.

"I'm not dead, alright?!" He announced and then spun around just to show off. He even held open his jacket to show that he was uninjured, "I escaped, I'm fine. Here I am here as proof. Tada! Okay? You happy? Now for the love of every stupid star please stop!" He shouted with unseen agony across the divide, "Your weird emotions are so loud in my head!"

The Doctor's eyes scanned over him in mild concern but her face only reflected a cold curiosity. The Master often withheld information, but he was rarely a blatant liar. Even with the sound of the drums, there had been truth behind his madness and it was the Doctor who had been wrong. She didn't believe she had reached out to him via their telepathic link, but she had been wrong about the things in his head before.

She looked over his tearful, pleading eyes. If nothing else, he was in pain and asking for her help. She knew what the right thing to do was.

The Doctor reached out and gently placed her hands on either side of the Master's face. He quickly accepted the invitation and pressed his face against her palms with more determination than was necessary.

The Doctor's face grew calm and focused as she searched for a way to close the bridge she didn't recall opening.

"I don't see an open channel," she noted. Her voice grew into a low focused hum as her mind was consumed by deep thought.

She stepped into his mind as if she had made a temporary bridge leading to an isolated plane of existance. She had stepped through the door into a large room, but fog clouded his mind and prevented her from seeing into it. The only things she could sense were whatever was closest and foremost in his mind.

The Master's hands fell over the Doctor's hands instead of reaching for her face. He seemed to understand her offer to help and willingly accepted it without any kind of need for more. Even he seemed to understand that this intimacy was separate from their rivalry. It was good to know that, even though it was mostly for selfish reasons, the Master maintained some level of mutual understanding.

The Doctor preferred not to have to worry about him looking around in her mind and briefly wondered if the Master had been able to pick up on it. She quickly dismissed it as she focused on her search for this supposed link.

"Are you sure you're not just... remorseful?" She considered out loud.

"No." The Master said definitively. But his voice was soft now, as if he was half asleep.

The Doctor looked around in an abstract way. Everything was shrouded in shadow or hidden by fog. A few happy memories were very carefully locked away in glass boxes in one careful corner- but most of his mind consisted of lapping waves of fear and rage. It was terrifying to wade through but the Doctor knew what she needed to find.

She found the gateway. He had indeed somehow attuned himself to her sorrow. She closed it. She began to step back through his messy mind, very carefully.

She noticed a locked vault of large wooden chests kept closed by metal chains and locks. The pile was huge and the boxes ranged from large to small. Some had their contents beating against their casing, but the vault door stayed tightly shut.

'They must contain memories he'd rather not think about', she noticed. But she simply continued on her way.

"You're relieved," the Master said. His voice sounded distant, seeing as it was outside her focus, but in a second she heard it all the same.

"Why would I be relieved?" She questioned.

"I thought you were in dispair at the loss of your home... but you're relieved."

"What are you talking about?" The Doctor retorted flatly.

"You're happy they're gone. You don't want to be, but you are. You were scared of them. All the Time Lords that ever had power over you. And the innocent children... you were scared FOR them. For so long. It took up so much energy to be so scared. You're so relieved that it's off your shoulders. That they're finally gone. That they can't hurt you anymore-"

The Doctor left his mind and was pulled back in reality. Her hands slipped away and the Master let them go. He looked... almost disappointed.

"No. What you did was wrong. All those people-"

The Master cut her off but there was no rage left in his voice, "Now all that's left is to be scared of yourself," he concluded, his gaze somewhere downwards and lost.

And then his eyes shot up to meet the Doctor's, in more agony and yet simultaneously more hopeful than ever before, "and be scared you'll become like me."

"No. I'll never be like you." The Doctor snapped, "not completely."

"You... don't have to be. I don't want you to be. That would be no fun," the Master chuckled softly. He reached for her hands and pulled them back to his face. His well-trimmed beard tickled the palms of the Doctor's hands but she allowed the action.

He was quieter now, and he didn't try to establish any kind of connection with the Doctor. He simply waited and wished. He closed his eyes, and soon the Doctor followed.

It was a certain kind of intimacy that neither of them had felt for an incredably long time and hadn't even realized they'd been missing until it was recently brought to their attention. The psychic nature of time lords had its practical applications, of course, but it was also something that required a great deal of trust. It could take centuries to develope a strong connection with someone- but they'd been working at it for so long their connection was seamless and clear.

By looking through someone else's mind, a time lord could gain not only information of someone's life; but their very way of thinking and feeling as it connects to the core of another living person. It was always a risk involved with relinquishing that kind of power to another, to allow someone that kind of free reign into the depths of your mind; but once all of that was overcome it felt like peace.

There was nothing more calming than to feel protected from not only exterior threats, but from interior ones as well. That was what the Master was asking for and that was what the Doctor was allowing herself to provide- absolute safety.

The Doctor didn't want the Master in her mind so she closed the door behind her- not that the Master was bothered by it. There wasn't any information he wanted from her anyhow.

And regardless, the Master's mind was more than messy enough to keep them both entertained. He liked the way she combed through its contents. It felt to him more calming than if she were gently running her hands through his hair. Not that he's ever thought about what that might feel like. Nope. Never even once.

Waves of resentment and agony lapped at the Doctor as if they were breakers splashing against her feet on a shoreline. Any kind of dispair the Master felt seemed to feed the constant waters persistently wearing away at him.

'No wonder he was always so upset, he couldn't catch a break even from his own mind,' The Doctor half-jokingly considered.

Within his mind, the Master bound himself against her as if she was a raft in this shipwreck. As she walked through his mind, the turbulent waters never touched her. They weren't her struggles in this mind and so they had no effect on her. By extention, as long as she was there, the Master was safe from his mind's tricks as well.

The Master took a small sigh of relief as his fingers rested on the gaps between the Doctor's fingers, outside in the physical world. The Doctor allowed her touch to keep him in the moment and she purposely quieted her own mind to safely lull him into a deep rest. He stood incredibly still, his breaths becoming slower and more shallow as they stood there, out in the open, and yet completely in their own world.

"I closed the line. Won't let it happen again." The Doctor noted. The update was obviously late, but the Master didn't seem to mind. In fact, he didn't have anything clever to angrily retort either. He simply remained still and silent.

The Doctor noticed a door to one of the Master's distant memory as it opened just to her left. The moment in particular was from one of their first attempts at a psychic link. They had been quite young and sitting on a library floor late into the evening back at the Academy. It wasn't the kind of thing they were supposed to know existed yet, but they had theorized they could use it as means of secret communication between them if they could understand it. As the Doctor reminisced on the topic, she realized they could have never imagined the depths they could one day reach when they had attempted it for the first time.

"The book says to put our hands like this," The Doctor's younger version was explaining. She could just barely hear the memory playing as she stepped into the doorframe of a sideroom. The room was dark, almost like a theatre, but the room was filled with almost overwhelming emotions. She was being slammed by every direction by something innocent and nostalgic as well as fear that made her heart race, and something so warm yet terrifying that it felt incomprehensible.

Her young version, was dressed in academy red and had matching hair while the Master was blond and in a similar uniform.

"Then we have to reach out somehow. And then we should be able to talk to each other," the Doctor's younger version continued.

The Doctor began to exit the room but the Master's childhood voice replied. It made her hesitate.

"I don't think we're supposed to be doing this... but it would be quite useful...."

The Doctor's younger version nodded and the two kids reached for each other's faces with agreed determination.

The door behind the Doctor slammed shut, ending the clip.

She already knew how it ended, with a gentle intimacy like nothing they'd ever felt before. However, she had stayed in that room any longer the overwhelming... affection she would have experienced for the first time, all over again, would have been far too much. Her hearts would have slammed out of her chest.

"Why that memory?" She asked softly.

"I didn't pick it," the Master noted.

And of course he didn't. That wasn't how minds worked. Minds simply connected certain things to other things. Whatever occured to him would open a door that the Doctor could step through. She could go looking for certain doors, but there was no organization to the Master's mind anyhow. She had things she did want to see. She wanted to know about the timeless child what was so terrible it could convince the Master that it's destruction was absolutely necessary.

But the Master's head was becoming heavy in her hands without meaning to. His face was closer than it had been when they'd begun.

The Doctor brought it closer until their foreheads touched and she could feel the Master's slow breath on her lips.

The truth was that the Doctor could feel her presence trigger something in him. Her touch was it's own calming link, pulling him away from the mess of his self-destructive mind and into the present.

No schemes for the future, no persistent fears haunting him from the past; just that moment. As if her steps around his mind were some kind of careful massage loosening the tension in his shoulders. She turned back towards the entrance to his mind, not wanting to venture to far into what she assumed the Master preferred to keep hidden. But, mildly disoriented by his peaceful haze, the Master mistook it for her leaving.

His face slid closer and turned slightly until the crooks of their noses pressed together, their faces fitting carefully into place.

"Don't leave me," he implored, his voice revealing a deeper hurt behind his words.

There was a door the Doctor noticed that hadn't been there before. It was incredibly old but swung open to reveal one of the boxes similar to the ones from the vault she had passed. But the contents of this box were seeping out of their container, through the cracks and out from under the lid.

The box revealed a damaged memory in the form of a fully realistic room, so vivid it was as if the Doctor was living through it. The memory was of the Master being called into the time war to fight, alone. The Doctor didn't step into the room, but even from outside it she could feel the waves of absolute panic pouring her racing heartbeat into her ears. The fear, the pain, the impending numbness to it all... and the wonder if death might be a mercy-

The door suddenly slammed shut and the Master pulled the Doctor's hands from his face. He tossed them back at her and turned away. He didn't reveal anything as he paced steadily crossed his porch and leaned against its door, running his own hands over his face to hide any possibly display of emotion.

He stayed there in stillness.

"I'm sorry-" the Doctor began.

"Shut it!" The Master shouted, still not turning to face her.

He sounded more frustrated and hurt than angry.

His hands finally fell away from his face, but he stayed there a moment longer, curved inwards, his head down and hands stuffed into his pockets.

Finally, he spoke again.

"This was stupid," he slammed his head against the door of his Tardis, "I won't tell you what I know. I had to find it out the hard way and so do you. So you'll understand-"

"I wasn't looking for it," the Doctor explained, her voice finding confidence again, "you could feel that I wasn't."

"I... I know," the Master explained flatly, "my brain associated similar emotions and brought out the memory. I know."

The Doctor looked him over.

"When was the last time you've slept?" She asked in a concoction of surprising realization and worry.

The Master turned from where his forearm was leaning against the door and looked over to her.

"What?" He asked as if her question was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard.

"When was the last time you slept? Well. What was the last time you slept WELL. Deeply, more than 4 solid hours, without nightmares scaring you half to death. Any of the above."

The Master looked away and ran his hands through his hair.

"How would you know. Why would you care?" He spat in reply.

"You were exhausted the moment I shielded you from your own mind," the Doctor explained, "You spend more energy fighting yourself than accomplishing anything else!"

The Master chuckled in the form of a smirk and a scoff.

"Never," he finally replied.

"Never?" The Doctor replied.

"Never- I've never slept well. There was always something. The drums, the never ending plans, the... _pain_."

"Then let me help you," the Doctor offered.

"I'm not going in there!" The Master snarled at the idea of being a captive in the Tardis.

The Doctor shook her head, "Fine. Then just sit down out here."

The Doctor leapt over the seamless divide and onto the porch- still floating with the backdrop of a supernova.

The Master grumbled something but did indeed sit down with his legs crossed and his back to the house, as if to ensure he wouldn't be separated from it.

The Doctor sat down similarly, across from him, and watched the Master indecisively argued with himself. Deep down, the Doctor hoped he would agree. Strangely enough, the careful distraction helped her not to feel so alone.

"Alright," the Master agreed once more.

The Doctor reached out her hands to rest on his face and the Master involuntarily shivered at the touch. It had been so long since he had felt any such kindness and the moment the Doctor stepped back into his mind she found it even worse than before.

In a metaphorical sense, the waves of panic and fury were rising up to her knees, threatening to flood everything in their wake. The doors shifted along the walls and switched around as if the Master was still uncertain if he wanted the Doctor there at all.

No wonder the man was a mess, he was fighting against himself for the ability to simply calm down.

The Doctor pulled his face closer and the Master willingly obliged. His forehead fell against hers and twisted so that their noses brushed. His breath was in quick bursts somewhere between scared and angry at himself.

The waters were rising and threatening to overpower him.

"It's okay," the Doctor said gently, "all we're doing is sitting right here, right now. There's no one within the distance of lifetimes that could possibly get to you right now and even if there was, I wouldn't let that happen. Just listen to my voice."

The Master took a shaky breath, suddenly overwhelmed, "There's just so many things...."

"But you're not there right now. All those things already happened. Just be here, with me."

The water drained away from the mental image of a room the Master's head pressed closer into the Doctor's hands, heavy in with relief.

She allowed a soft wave of peacefulness to wash over him and she put on some soft, unidentifyable music in the background of her mind as a way to mark the passing of time.

It was working quite quickly in the Master's exhausted state and the agony pulling him down quickly disappeared. His clouded mind was nearly clear and the clutter surrounding them was pushed deeper into hidden rooms.

She could even feel her own presence affecting him. The Doctor could feel as he reached for the quiet parts of her mind and held them gently as he slipped away to something unknown.

She maintained the link as she pulled her hands away from him and layed his limp body across the porch. She pulled a pillow from one of her huge pockets and set it down before setting the Master's lax head onto it.

It was working, the Master's mind fell quiet. Anything happening in the background was replaced by the white noise of the Doctor's own mind.

The Doctor pulled out a pillow from her other pocket- them being bigger on the inside really helped in this case- and laid down on her back next to him, a few feet away. She stayed there- still and quiet- and kept the psychic link open.

She occasionally felt the shadow of an upsetting thought pass over them, but she would immediately push it back through one of the doors and out of sight. There would be nothing bothering her friend until he woke up again. She had told him as such and she was determined to keep her word.

All this time she had been worried about herself. That she was alone, that she didn't want to become someone she no longer recognized, that the safe life she had created for herself was suddenly being ripped from her grasp.

But the truth was that these problems were all her own mind. In reality, she had friends who cared about her and she COULD tell them the truth. She could tell them about her problems from the past and more importantly how she's been working to be better and wants their help to ensure she continues doing the right thing. And if they ARE really her friends, they'll support her.

She began to forget what she was so worried about.

Maybe a tiny fragment of her WAS relieved that her world was gone- but the sorrow from such in devistating loss still won out. She could feel both emotions at the same time.

The Doctor wasn't a bad person for having a full range of emotions. She had a good head on her shoulders and as long as she used it, she could continue to be someone better than she was yesterday.

The Master tossed an arm over her and hid his face in her side, absolutely and completely asleep.

The Doctor continued filtering out the Master's dreams and even gave him a few nice ones of her own design. Meanwhile, the Doctor stargazed.

The Master woke up after about 10 hours of sleep, he glanced around and then fell directly back into a light nap.

The Doctor chuckled. She was quickly forgetting what she had been so scared of.

Maybe she hadn't been able to save Gallifrey for long, but now it had a conclusion. The time lords as an order were over. In a way, the two of them that remained were finally free. The Earth was safe, her friends were safe, and even the absolute madmad next to her was safe.

Some things were worth reflecting on, but the Master was proof that being consumed by it would destory you. Instead, the Doctor rather liked looking to the future, looking to beauty and the world of possibilities around them.

She added in a suggestion to the Master's quiet mind.

Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it to the end, thank you so much! I know I got a little carried away with the idea of this mind sharing technique they use. I'm not sure about what's canon but in this version, I think it's something that would be very intimate and the depths to which the technique can extend depend on the strength of the relationship between participants. Regardless, I wrote this mostly to cope with my own anxiety but I don't know maybe this can help someone else too. And regardless the world needs more Doctor/Master fics so yep.  
> Thanks for reading!


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